Grant T Harris

The Screening Scale for Pedophilic Interests (SSPI; Seto & Lalumière, 2001), a brief measure of sexual attraction to prepubescent children that is based on victim characteristics, was used in two samples of 113 and 145 adult male sex offenders with child victims. In both samples, the SSPI was significantly and positively correlated with an index of phallometrically-measured sexual arousal to stimuli depicting prepubescent children. It was also significantly and positively correlated in ...

Four actuarial instruments for the prediction of violent and sexual reoffending (the Violence Risk Appraisal Guide [VRAG], Sex Offender Risk Appraisal Guide [SORAG], Rapid Risk Assessment for Sex Offender Recidivism [RRASOR] and Static-99) were evaluated in 4 samples of sex offenders (N = 396). Although all 4 instruments predicted violent (including sexual) recidivism and recidivism known to be sexually motivated, areas under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) were consistently ...

Age is a robust predictor of recidivism and an item on actuarial tools commonly used to predict sexual violent recidivism among sex offenders. However, little is known about whether or how much offenders' risk diminishes as a result of aging. In the first of two studies, we examined the sexual and violent recidivism of 533 sex offenders who were over age 50 on release. Age at index offense was at least as good at predicting both outcomes as was age at release, and age at index offense ...

Use of weapons is a risk factor for domestic violence severity, especially lethality. It is not clear, however, whether access to firearms itself increases assault severity, or whether it is characteristic of a subgroup of offenders who are more likely to commit severe and repeated domestic assault. This reanalysis of 1,421 police reports of domestic violence by men found that 6% used a weapon during the assault and 8% had access to firearms. We expected that firearm use would be rare ...

In phallometric research, rapists have a unique pattern of erectile responses to stimuli depicting sexual activities involving coercion and violence. In this study, we attempted to determine the cues that control rapists’ erectile responses to rape stories in the laboratory. A total of 12 rapists and 14 non-rapists were exposed to recorded audio scenarios that systematically varied with regard to the presence or absence of three orthogonally varied elements: sexual activity and nudity, ...

One explanation of the finding that rapists and nonrapists differ in their sexual arousal patterns is that when listening to rape stories, nonrapists, but not rapists, empathize with the rape victim and their sexual arousal is inhibited by her suffering. Fourteen heterosexual rapists and 14 men who were not sex offenders were presented with audiotaped narrations while their penile tumescence was measured. All stories described a male-female interaction and the categories included rape ...

A cross-validation of the Violence Risk Appraisal Guide was performed on a sample of 159 child molesters and rapists followed for an average of 10 years at risk. The performance of the instrument was also examined on a 10-yr followup of 288 sex offenders that included both those in the original construction sample for the VRAG and the validation sample. The instrument performed as well as it had in construction for predicting violent recidivism in both the cross-validation and extended ...

OBJECTIVE: To help clinicians enhance the safety of the public, hospital staff, and patients and improve patient management, this article briefly reviews recent empirical work on appraisal of the risk of violence and the management of violent individuals.

METHODS: Research on the prediction, management, and treatment of violent persons published in the last decade was reviewed.

RESULTS: Risk appraisal research indicates that violence is predictable in some populations. The factors most ...

Although phallometric assessment is the best scientific method for measuring male sexual interest, it is intrusive and highly technical. We examined viewing time as an unobtrusive and technically simple measure of sexual preference and compared the discrimination obtained by viewing time measures with that obtained by phallometric measures. Slides of nude males and females of various ages were shown to child molesters and normal men while their viewing times were recorded. Subjects then ...

Psychopathy has been associated with atypical function of the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and adjacent brain regions and with abnormalities in performance monitoring, which is thought to rely on these structures. The ACC and adjacent regions are also involved in the generation of two characteristic components of the event-related potential: the frontal N2 and P3. Both components are enhanced when a response is withheld (NoGo trial) within a series of positive-responses (Go trials) ...

An exhaustive survey of a cohort of forensic patients provided an opportunity for a prospective replication of the predictive accuracy of the Violence Risk Appraisal Guide (VRAG). Data collected during the original survey also permitted a test of the predictive accuracy of clinical assessments of risk on the same cohort. The VRAG yielded a large effect size in predicting violent recidivism (ROC area = .80) over a constant 5-year follow-up and performed significantly better than averaged ...

Two studies herein address age, the passage of time since the first offense, time spent incarcerated, or time spent offense free in the community as empirically justified postevaluation adjustments in forensic violence risk assessment. Using three non-overlapping samples of violent offenders, the first study examined whether any of three variables (time elapsed since the first offense, time spent incarcerated, and age at release) were related to violent recidivism or made an incremental ...

Early starting, lifetime criminal persistence has been called sociopathy, antisocial personality disorder, and psychopathy. There is, however, disagreement about its core features and which measure is best for identifying such individuals. In the 1st of 2 studies of male offenders (n = 74), we found a large association between scores on the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R; R. D. Hare, 1991) and the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed. [DSM-IV]; American ...

An actuarial assessment to predict male-to-female marital violence was constructed from a pool of potential predictors in a sample of 589 offenders identified in police records and followed up for an average of almost 5 years. Archival information in several domains (offender characteristics, domestic violence history, nondomestic criminal history, relationship characteristics, victim characteristics, index offense) and recidivism were subjected to setwise and stepwise logistic ...

By some accounts, sex offenders with mental retardation commit sex offenses against children because the offenders lack sexual knowledge or are socially and intellectually immature rather than because of sexually deviant interests. By other accounts, these offenders exhibit pedophilic sexual interests. In this study, phallometrically determined sexual interests, recidivism, and choices of victims of 69 sex offenders with mental retardation are examined and compared with those of 69 sex ...